Home / Questions / What is a comment? Is the comment ignored by the compiler? How do you denote a comment line and a comment paragraph?
Explanatory Question

What is a comment? Is the comment ignored by the compiler? How do you denote a comment line and a comment paragraph?

👁 7,047 Views
📘 Detailed Answer
🕒 Easy to Read
Read the answer carefully and go through the related questions on the right side to improve your understanding of this topic.

Answer with Explanation

A comment is a piece of text within a program that is not executed as part of the code. Its purpose is to provide explanations, notes, or documentation about the code to help programmers understand it better. Comments are for human readers and are ignored by the compiler during the compilation process.

In Java, comments can be single-line or multi-line:

  1. Single-line comments:

    • Denoted by two forward slashes (//).
    • Anything following // on the same line is treated as a comment and is ignored by the compiler.
    
// This is a single-line comment
int x = 10; // This comment is at the end of a line of code

  2. Multi-line comments:

    • Enclosed between /* and */.
    • Everything between these delimiters is treated as a comment and is ignored by the compiler.
    
/*
This is a multi-line comment.
It can span multiple lines.
*/
int y = 20;

Comments are essential for code documentation, making it easier for developers to understand the purpose and functionality of the code. They are not executed during runtime and do not affect the program's behavior. Instead, they serve as helpful notes for programmers working on or reading the code.